


Geborgenheit

by Silverinia



Category: The Good Fight (TV), The Good Wife (TV)
Genre: Angst, Banter, Cancer, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Heavy Angst, Kid Fic, McHart acing the co-parenting game, McVeigh family fun, but Diane also definitely dies, everything's super fun and domestic, fun facts about chess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:47:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27566257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silverinia/pseuds/Silverinia
Summary: "She said she would always be my Mom, but if that were true, this wouldn't hurt so much."- "Actually, I think that's exactly why it hurts so much."
Relationships: Diane Lockhart/Kurt McVeigh
Comments: 14
Kudos: 38





	Geborgenheit

**Author's Note:**

> Well, shit. I have no idea where to start.
> 
> Before you continue, please make sure you've seen the major character death warning on this fic. I've been through this war before and I don't need any more rude tumblr anons ruining my days, I genuinely do not have the time for that. I love writing fanfic and I specifically love writing for McHart, but everything that comes with it - demands for updates and disrespectful remarks - are not worth ruining this for me. I question a lot of my abilities, but I don't question writing and I'd like to keep it that way, because writing makes me stronger, it makes me more myself, it makes me who I am. And as much as I love this pairing, it's not worth holding on to it when its circumstances ruin writing for me. So, that's it for the boring, sad part I just had to get out.
> 
> A huge thank you, as always, to Baranskini. For all the times where we've gone on and on about our McVeigh family headcanons in the last months. For helping me decide on changing the son's name that caused me half an existential crisis. For the way you keep encouraging me, especially about this fic in the last few days, even though I know that you'd much rather read something with a happy ending. For just being my friend. I truly wouldn't have finished this without you. And you already know that I probably wouldn't even be in this fandom anymore without you.
> 
> Alright. Hope you guys enjoy this.

** Geborgenheit **

_[German, noun]_

often translated to security, protection, comfort, warmth, closeness, peace, trust, acceptance or love, but widely considered impossible to translate  
a feeling strongly associated with artists, often felt at intensely emotional moments  
the feeling of returning home for Christmas  
the feeling of laughing and crying freely with your best friend without having to hold back  
the feeling of embracing someone you love  
the feeling of finding strength by looking into another person’s eyes  
the feeling of security in another person’s arms

It all started with a fever.

She woke up one night, her head pounding like someone had smashed a vase on her skull. Her lips were dry, her hair damp with sweat, light blue eyes glazed and shimmering up at him when he flicked the lamp on his nightstand on and leaned over her, his eyes thinned in tired confusion in his struggle of trying to wake up at the sounds of her pained groans.

He said her name, again and again, she could hear the two syllables repeating themselves through the fog surrounding her brain, echoing through the heavy mist until she felt his warm lips on her forehead.

“Di, you’re heating up. I’ll be right back.”

He slipped out of bed and rushed downstairs, his barefoot steps clumsy in the semi-darkness of the night and the dizziness of just having been pulled out of his sleep. Switching on the light, he lit up the kitchen and put the water kettle on the stove before reaching over to the medicine cabinet. She liked tea at night. And it always helped her on the rare occasions of when she was sick.

Or rather when she allowed herself to be sick, which she never really wholeheartedly did, as if having the immune system of a real, living human being was a kind of weakness she did not like to admit to having.

“Dad?”

He turned on his heels and looked up to his son standing in the doorway as the kettle started screeching softly. His brown, thick hair was tousled, as it always was lately while the limited colour palette of his clothing kept darkening by the day. He was not a little kid anymore, a blink of an eye away from being a man with his sixteen years, but it was moments like this when he stood there in his _Smashing Pumpkins_ t-shirt and mismatched, plaid pyjama pants, with this look of uncertainty in the light blue eyes he had inherited from his wife behind his thickly rimmed glasses that had become a rarer sight in the years that had gone by, that he looked just like his little boy again, standing in front of their bed in the middle of the night and silently meeting his father’s gaze to wordlessly ask him if he could sleep between them after having woken up from a nightmare.

“Mom has a fever.”, he said with a sympathetic half-smile. “Could be the flu.”

A frown crept over Nathan’s forehead and Kurt turned to the kettle, filling Diane’s favourite red mug with boiling water. The scent of sweetened vanilla green tea spread in the air as he grabbed the pills he’d laid out, his movements freezing when he heard the cautious tilt in his son’s hushed voice again.

“She’s been working pretty hard lately.”, he said and Kurt turned again, the mug in one, the pills in his other hand.

“I know, kid. That’s your mother.”, he said with a small shrug, shaking his head, a lopsided, encouraging smile curling his lips. “But don’t worry about her, I’ve got it. Go back to bed.”

She was better the next morning, the fever had gone down overnight and the dull pain in her head was soothingly numbed by painkillers, but she was still tired. And even if Kurt had not forced her to take the day off, she probably would have considered it herself, something she chose not to mention because she knew it would only needlessly worry him.

She sat at the kitchen isle, sipping mild coffee with milk, wrapped into one of her silk robes as Nathan stepped in to grab his lunch and his big flask of coffee for school. He drank coffee now and she found herself reminding him to throw in a glass of water every now and then quite regularly these days. Sometimes looking at him made her wonder how she could have missed the exact point when the concept of time had begun to slip away from her grasp.

“Morning, Mom.”, he said, the feigned casualty in his deep voice detected by her the second her eyes met his concerned gaze.

“Hey, honey. You okay?”, she asked softly, and he examined her expression over the rim of his glasses.

“Yeah, just didn’t sleep much. Feeling any better?”

She nodded, a gentle smile on her lips, but the disbelieving look in his eyes did not change. “Much better.”, she told him in a small attempt to calm his nerves. He gave her a quick nod and she tilted her head. “Hey, don’t worry about me, I’m absolutely fine. And don’t you dare ‘forget’ to take some water with you again, okay?”

His lips curled into a crooked, half-hearted smile and he nodded again, pushing his lunch bag, the tall flask of coffee and a small bottle of carbonated water in his backpack, looking ready to turn around and go. But then he walked over to her and stopped, hesitating for a moment in which he eyed at her in a teenager’s awkwardness mixed with concern that looked much too mature for his age and her liking, until he leaned in and pressed a chaste kiss on her cheek.

“Love you, Mom.”, he mumbled before turning away and hastily leaving the room before she could catch another gaze into his eyes.

“Love you, too.”, she whispered into her mug before she took another warm sip while listening to the front door falling shut.

It all started with a fever. With the concern in her husband’s voice and the worry in her son’s gaze, in his blue eyes that look so much like her own. It was like she could feel them on her as she was seated across from Doctor Carlsson and felt her world slipping out of her clenched fingers that were entwined in her lap in a poised manner that didn’t let on how her heart was aching uncontrollably in her chest, more with every passing second, pushing shockwaves against her aching ribcage, her throat tightening as she heard the words she had somehow, in the back of her head, seemingly always dreaded but not even for a moment considered to ever having to hear up until now, in the hopelessly romantic optimism her life, her family had pulled her into.

Acute leukaemia. The c-word.

Words she could identify with just as much as the pictures from the scans that were displayed on the desk in front of her felt like pictures of her own body; not even the slightest bit.

The doctor eyed her, silent for a while, like she was expecting her to say something when there really was nothing to say. To voice doubt over the diagnosis, to bombard her with questions about possible treatment options with which she could desperately try and delay the inevitable expiration date the doctor had suddenly tattooed on every inch of her skin, to break down in tears, to scream and yell at her because she, her life and everything she held dear were suddenly broken, shattered to pieces and not ever able to be mended again.

But she did none of those things. She just looked back at her and her fingers started slowly twisting the golden ring on her left hand over her skin as Doctor Carlsson began to speak again, throwing words like radiation, chemotherapy and arsenic trioxide into the small, white-walled room, tossing them into her life through an opening that she had never noticed before and suddenly felt like a void that threatened to pull her in whole, and she left her with them and the feeling she could not shake off that this simply wasn’t right. Those things did not belong in her perfectly imperfect life, were too cruel to deserve a spot in the middle of everything she liked to call her own to suddenly become the centre of attention that overshadowed all that she had worked for.

Her happiness.

Diane’s gaze suddenly slipped away from the doctor’s and she looked over to the large window to her left. It was just shortly after noon and the heavy, grey clouds from the morning had made room for bright streaks of warm sunlight.

It was too soon to leave, she thought as she felt the sunshine on the bridge of her nose, the light blue sky like a liquidation of her eyes, her eyes that would keep squinting at the blinding light through the gaze of her son who had yet to see so much of this world. She saw them before her, blinking lazily open when she would wake him up in the morning after he’d put his alarm clock out for the third round of snooze, so he would catch the school bus in time. The mischievous gaze she met at the dinner table when she made a joke on Kurt’s expense and he would cast her a knowing grin instead of laughing out loud in his father’s proud presence, every shared look like a look into a mirror that showed off a better version of herself. Like the concerned look he had cast her the morning after her first fever.

It was too soon. It would always be too soon.

…

He didn’t understand what she was saying at first. His face didn’t change, the slight concern at the words _We need to talk_ she so rarely used that he couldn’t even recall the last time she had was still swimming in his eyes, increasing the delicate lines on his forehead that had just recently began to set in his skin, like the statement that had followed hadn’t even left her throat yet.

Her red lips had moved around the words and he’d known what she was saying, even though he could not hear her clear and strong voice over the shrill ringing in his ears. He longed for it to stop, craved to hear her voice that would have made him question how on earth she could be so calm right now, the reassuring, resilient look in her eyes and the gentle squeeze of her fingers on his hand between their hips on the edge of the bed like the biggest contradiction to her words he had ever witnessed in her.

“Kurt?”, she asked through the white noise in his ears and he shook his head, his thumb rolling over the back of her hand as his eyes finally had to leave her gaze, flying to the closed bedroom door.

“I know this is a lot to take in.”, she continued. And it sounded like she was telling him about a change in the weather or catastrophic political world affairs she’d heard of on the news, something oh so distant from them that could never even attempt to touch the happiness in their little corner of the world, but definitely, most definitely not this.

“How— “, he began, stopping quickly when he heard the raspy sound of his own voice, shaking his head again as though denial could somehow be the key to mend the reality that suddenly lay broken to his feet. “How could this happen?”

Diane tilted her head in question. “What do you mean?”, she asked softly, her eyes thinned.

“I mean, why, how… You… Diane, you watch what you eat. You exercise three times a week. You quit smoking decades ago. You rarely drink a lot, you make regular doctor’s appointments, you… you sleep well, at least most of the time, you—”

“Kurt.”, she gently cut off his stammering, something in her heart ripping painfully when he looked up at her again, a pained tilt in the corners of his parted lips, a gap for the words he did not have and still wanted to express, an unfamiliar helplessness in his heartbreakingly familiar green eyes that were filled with tears. She squeezed his hand again, trying to give him a small, lopsided smile in a sincere attempt of encouragement and failing miserably. “These things don’t always need a particular reason. Sometimes they can just happen.”

“I know, but…” He stopped to take a shuddering breath, his low voice throaty when he continued. “Di, not to _you_. Not to _us_.”

Her lips parted and closed again silently before she swallowed hard, willing the tears that were threatening to drown her sight to stay in, willing herself not to be weak. “I’m sorry.”, she whispered breathily.

He looked at her for a long moment, one of his brows furrowed, his head slightly tilted forward as though it were giving him a little relief. And then he leaned in and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close as he felt her spine straightening, her body tensing, before her trembling hands came to rest on his upper back, her head falling on his shoulder. She breathed in, the first deep, steady breath she had taken all day as she inhaled his scent, where wood and pine trees met fire and gunpowder, mingling into something greater, something indescribable.

The feeling of being loved, of being understood, unconditionally cared for and safe. The feeling of being at home.

The tears in his eyes suddenly rolled down his cheeks when she tilted her head and pressed her soft, velvety lips against his neck. His arms tightened around her as he allowed them to be soaked up by the silk of her white blouse, leaving a salty, wet stain in the fabric next to her collar as the realisation hit him with full force, straining his lungs, tightening the knot in his throat and blinding him with a fresh coat of tears.

He wasn’t ready for this.

He would never be ready for this.

To already face the end of the forever they had once promised each other and continued to do so with every day that had followed since. To wake up without her head resting on his chest, to stop rolling his eyes at the teasing remarks she shot him whenever she had the chance to, whether it was about his hopeless incapability to accurately measure the laundry detergent or the slowly greying hair on his temples she secretly loved that became visible when the sunlight shone down on him in the right angle, to not feel her hand gently closing around his when he would be too strict with the kids, silently telling him that he did not need to worry so much.

He was not ready to lose her.

“How long?”

It wasn’t the most elaborate way of asking. But in twenty-two years of marriage she had learned to get used to it. And it had been the second question she had asked too, after she had managed to fall out of her trance at the doctor’s office.

_How much time do we have left?_

Right after she had asked, _Is it hereditary?_ , which it luckily wasn’t. She did not know what on earth she would have done if it were.

Her head rose and she shifted, his arms remaining around her as she met his watery eyes. Her thumbs gently roamed over his wet cheeks. “Anything between two to six months. It’s acute leukaemia, not a chronic form, so from what I understand it can escalate pretty much any day… as it apparently already has. One year at the most with a good portion of luck, if I let them wreck what’s left of my body and quality of life with chemotherapy.”

“Which you will, right?”, he asked gravely, no sign of acknowledgement of her weak attempt to make a joke on his features.

She shrugged, casting him a sad smile. “I suppose. I haven’t really had the time to think about it yet.”

Disagreement darkened his green eyes and one of his hands left her waist, rising to scratch the skin behind his right ear, his lips parting and she could see the dissent lingering on his bottom lip, until he spoke, surprising her as he still did after all these years, the hopelessness in the quiver of his low voice breaking her heart. “What are we gonna do now?”

She swallowed, shaking her head as she tried to regain her composure. “Well… I’ll need to break the news to Will. We’ll have to call the clients, reassign my current cases, get the shift in management in order and then I’ll leave the firm. And…” She paused, taking a deep breath. “And we’ll have to talk to the kids.”

He blinked a couple of times. “You want to quit your job?”

“I don’t _want_ to, but I don’t plan on spending what possibly are going to be my last six to twelve months alone in my office either, pulling fourteen-hour days to keep pushing for billable hours until I make it to the finishing line.”, she said, her voice something between a whisper and a chuckle.

He shot her a frown. “Sounds to me like you’ve already given up.”

“What other options do I have, Kurt? With this prognosis? I might be an idealist, darling, but I’m not naive.”

He looked away, his hands rubbing over his face, lingering on his eyes, until he sighed, his gaze flying back to hers. “What on earth are we gonna tell the kids?” His voice was low, almost a mere whisper and she took his hand in hers again, entwining their fingers.

“I’ll talk to Nathan. And I’ll have to call Lily. It’s terrible to tell her over the phone but it’s not like we have a choice, I can’t make her fly all the way here from Paris just to tell her that I’m dying.”

Kurt winced, whether it was at her words or the forced semi-lightness of her tone, she did not know. Then he shook his head, swallowing as he squeezed her hand. “Di, you don’t have to do this alone. Let me help.”

She cast him a smile. “Kurt, you’re here. And that’s more than I could possibly ask for.”

He nodded slowly, looking far from satisfied as he squinted his eyes, taking her in so attentively that it almost made her uncomfortable.

It was hard to keep it together when he was looking at her like that.

Actually, it was always hard to keep it together in front of him. She was good at concealing her feelings, had mastered the art of swallowing her worries and not letting on what was troubling her or that she was even troubled in the first place to whoever she had to encounter on rough days. But not with Kurt.

Never with Kurt.

“How can you be so calm about this?”, he suddenly disturbed the silence, and she had to dig her teeth into the inside of her cheek to keep herself from laughing at the witless absurdity.

“Want me to yell at you?”, she asked, a small smirk tugging on one corner of her lips. He did not laugh, so she swallowed and tilted her head. “Because, sweetheart, I’m pretty sure that if I start freaking out now, there’s no coming back from it again.”

…

Diane insisted on telling Nathan alone. They both knew that it was the smart move to make, she had always been better at talking to him than Kurt.

Still, he had protested at first but finally given in when she had recognised what she’d first mistaken for annoyance at her familiar and never-ending craving for independence and her tendency to refuse aid; helplessness and fear that had shaken awake his need to do something, _anything_ that might help her, even when they both knew that nothing could really help. And she had eventually asked him to call their daughter while she would go out and talk to their son.

He walked back to he couch when he heard the front door falling shut, washing the house in unpleasant silence as he took a seat, like the calm before the storm. The sky outside had turned light grey, the wind whipping through the cherry blossom trees that lined the streets of their neighbourhood, coating the sidewalks in a layer of light pink dots. It was supposed to rain today, later in the evening.

He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, burying his face in his hands until he took a deep breath, and another one. Then his fingers disappeared in the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out his cell phone.

She answered after the second ringing.

“Hey Dad!”, he heard her say in her usual bubbly, light tone. It felt heavy today, hearing it, like an additional weight pressing down on his chest, another piece of lightness that was going to be taken away from them.

“Hey sweetheart.”, he said, his voice unable to feign the cheerfulness he had been willing it to have. “I’m sorry, I know it’s late in Europe.”

“Dad, it’s almost ten pm. I’m young, my day has basically just started.”, she answered with a small chuckle. “Is everything okay? You sound strange.”

“Yeah, everything’s… Actually no, it’s not. I…”

He shook his head, standing up from the cushions and walked over to the fireplace. His eyes slowly drifted over the mantelpiece, unsure of what they were searching for, until they finally settled on one of the framed photographs. Will had taken it at the second Thanksgiving dinner he’d spent with them.

It showed his daughter, five years old, her blonde hair that fell in waves just over her shoulders was neatly clipped back with a pink barrette as she smiled toothily into the camera, her grin so wide that her eyes were almost closed. She sat on Diane’s lap, Diane, fourteen years younger than she was today, her hair darker compared to today’s golden blonde that she’d worn ever since she’d said goodbye to her natural hair colour after she had one morning, with a panicked shriek that had come out of the bathroom, spotted her first grey hair. Her arms were wrapped around her daughter, a smile of comfort and easement on her dark red lips, her head slightly tilted in Kurt’s direction. And Kurt was sitting right by her side, looking at her, bouncing a one year old Nathan on his knee, his eyes on his wife, the look on his face telling everyone who was willing to watch that this was a man who had everything he could possibly want, a man who couldn’t believe his luck, a man who was so utterly in love with the woman he was watching that it almost hurt just looking at it.

It was the picture he saw every time he opened the desktop screen of his laptop, he had probably seen it a thousand times by now, each time flashing it a quick smile at the fond memory. But today, today it forced sharp tears into his eyes.

“Lily, there’s something I have to tell you.”

He could practically hear the smile falling from his daughter’s lips on the other end of the line, her eyebrows shooting together in a frown. “What happened? Are you guys alright?”

Kurt’s eyes closed, pushing the tears down his cheeks, until his gaze met Diane’s smile again. He swallowed, his voice throaty when he spoke. “Lily, it’s your mother. She… She went to the doctor last week for a regular check-up, she’s been having those fevers lately. But they called her in again because her hemogram didn’t…” He paused again, swallowing a sob that threatened to escape him, his throat aching in the motion. “Honey, Mom has cancer.”

…

They strolled around the neighbourhood for a while, passing by groups of children who decorated the streets with pink and green chalk in doodles and pictures they only could have decoded themselves, children whose sounding laughter suddenly fell to an attempt of hushed but still very much audible whispers when they accidentally kicked their soccer balls on Mr. Periwinkle’s yard, an old man who lived across the street and was known for a lot of things but certainly not for his charismatic attitude towards people under the age of fifty.

They passed the seemingly endless line of white fences and after more than twenty years of living here, Diane still had to bite back a smile at the irony of time. She had grown up in a neighbourhood not too different from this one, wealthier, yes, significantly more uptight, also yes, but it held a similar spirit to it, an atmosphere that all but screamed picture-perfect idyll. Even though her parents’ house had never felt picture-perfect, nor idyllic to her growing up, and even today in retrospective, she only seemed to be able to see all the past faults with an additional pinch of clarity. She sometimes wondered if her own children felt the same about their home as she once had. And in the past couple of days, she had been trying not to wonder anymore when, in case it was true, it would change for them, at what point in time visiting the old familiar streets would really start to feel like coming back home, or if it would ever, which she hoped for dearly if it didn’t already.

For her, it had been marrying Kurt. She’d been working as an attorney for a while, they had just bought the lavender-blue house down the street—in her mind still by far the most beautiful one of them all—, they’d had plans to start a family. She had found her place in the world at the age of twenty-eight. An age she now knew she would never witness in her own children.

They took a turn into the park after half an hour of deliberately innocuous but pleasant small talk, of her asking him how school was ( _math and science were still a safe bet, but French and Spanish gave him a hard time, and yes he would gladly let her look over his French paper_ ), what band he liked most at the moment ( _Was it still Green Day? No, Mom, not since their last album, which apparently could not keep up with his high expectations based on the prior one at all_ ), and if he still wanted that ear piercing he’d mentioned a couple of months back ( _it’s called a conch piercing, Mom, and he very much did, so_ _she promised to talk to his father about it_ ) until they sat down on a wooden bank right across from the tiny, overgrown pond in the heart of the small park. Kurt and the kids used to go up here years ago to catch frogs and free them again, to play with mud and pluck daisies to bring them home to their mother, or whatever else it was that made places filled with dirt and bugs so appealing to little children—and her husband.

It was a cold day at the end of September. The park was deserted and Diane nibbled on the inside of her cheek, her cold hands balled into fists in the pockets of her coat, until her son’s voice made her realise that she had suddenly fallen into heavy silence.

Diane was the one who carried their conversations. Nathan was witty and a joy to speak with, but he was not a talker. Just like his father.

“Mom? You okay?”, he asked, causing her to look up and meet his eyes that held the same look of concern to them they had worn the morning after her fever.

She cast him a soft, almost apologetic smile. “Nathan, there’s something I have to tell you.”

A frown crept over his forehead, his eyes thinning at first, then widening slowly. “Am I in trouble?”, he asked in a small voice and she chuckled lightly against the aching in her chest, shaking her head.

“No, darling, you’re perfect. It’s…” She paused, her tongue wetting her red lips, pressing them together while her eyes drifted away from his, settling on a nearby cherry blossom tree as the wind whiffed through the crown and showered the grey pavement around it in pastel pink. “I’m sorry, this is not easy.”

“Mom?” His voice, the timid scratch in the word made her look at him again.

She offered him another smile that never reached her eyes. Her eyes that looked just like his. “Honey, I’m sick.”, she said, her voice calm and composed, her knuckles aching, her nails painfully pressing deep halfmoons into her palms inside her coat pockets.

Nathan’s face did not change, his left brow furrowed, like the image of his father. “Is this about the fevers you’ve been having?”

“Yeah. Turns out, it wasn’t the flu.”, she joked half-heartedly with a slight tilt of her head, a sorry attempt of ridding his eyes of this look she couldn’t stand to feel on herself.

“How bad is it?”, he asked lowly, and she huffed out a heavy exhale.

“Pretty bad.”

His eyes escaped hers, facing front and getting captured by the pond. Three dying water lilies were floating over the surface of the water, rushed on by the wind that changed its direction in the small area that was framed by trees of various heights, from north to west and wherever it liked.

“What is it?”, he asked lowly, her eyes on him as his remained by the pond.

“It’s leukaemia.”, she said, startled by the strength of her own voice. But then again, this felt abstract, plain Latin medical terms to describe her body’s condition. It was not the part she’d feared because they did not even feel real, unlike the fate they were laying out for her, the sudden change in the path she would have to follow while everyone she loved was forced to watch. That was the hard part, the one that felt real, that had the strength to break her composure, the one she feared. “Acute leukaemia. It’s terminal.”

“So…”, he drifted off, his right knee suddenly beginning to bounce up and down, her gaze immediately captured by the movement, until it suddenly came to a halt, making room for her to fully concentrate on his quiet voice, like another cruel twist of fate. “You’re dying?”

“Yes.”

“But I…” His head suddenly shot aside, his skin paler than it had been just moments ago, his brow still furrowed. “Mom, what about me and Lily?”

Diane’s heart clenched at his words, tears threatening to start pooling in her eyes, the knot in her throat only tightening when he continued, his mind apparently having gone into a very different direction compared to her own, one that wasn’t significantly less painful to think about.

“I know there are treatments for these kinds of things, aren’t there? Blood donations? Stem cell treatments? And at least one of us should be a good match for you, _right_?”

His voice had grown louder, not so much that it would’ve made a difference to anyone who did not know him like she did. But she was his mother. And she heard it painfully clearly.

“Nathan.”, she began softly, as the helpless look in his eyes dug holes into her heart. “It’s in my kidneys. It’s in my liver, in my lymph nodes and my spleen. It looks like it has just reached my meninx. I don’t think I would even survive a stem cell treatment at this point.”

His jaw tensed and he shook his head, something flashing in his eyes that she knew all too well. Helplessness and fear concealed with anger. A look she had practically invented. A look his father had never been estranged from either.

“So, what? You’re just going to give up?”

“Darling, no.”, she said calmly. “But I have to be realistic about this.”

His eyes drifted away again, back to the pond, back to the unpredictable movement of the water lilies. “How long…”, he began, his voice back to its prior whisper. “How long can you live with it?”

“With my test results, they say it could be anything up to a year from now.”, she said, pressing her lips together when he saw his jaw tensing again.

“One year.”

“Maximum.”

Slowly, as not to startle him, her cold hand left her coat pocket before it rose and gently began to brush over his upper back, smoothly gliding over the fabric of his black leather jacket that was hardly warm enough for a day like today. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart.”, she rasped and he winced at the first raw change in her usually so collected, strong voice.

“I…” He cleared his throat, his head dropping lightly, wild strands of thick, brown hair falling deeper on his forehead. “This isn’t fair.”

Diane sniffed, louder than she had intended to, her hand drawing another circle on leather before it fell back into her lap. “I know. I really am sorry.”

He sat up, leaning back into the park bench again and meeting her gaze. “Are you in pain?”, he asked softly, and she shook her head. “But you were the other night. And the one after that. And last Friday when you came home from work.”

He already knew the answer. But he deserved to hear it, deserved a shot at trying to understand something Kurt and herself had not even been able to wrap their heads around. “Yes.”

The water lilies changed their direction again, swimming where the wind carried them, passive and weak, their own simplicity suddenly so blatantly obvious, now that the beginning of fall had caused them to wither, now that the edges of their blooms had shifted from bright pink to pale brown. Their existence had always depended entirely on circumstances. The direction of the wind that let them drift together and apart, the seasonal change, the intensity of the sun. They had never been strong to begin with. Or else they wouldn’t look so weak now.

“I don’t know what to say.”, he broke the silence after a while, his voice almost a whisper, barely audible through the cold wind. Diane reached for his hand, cold fingers enveloping warm skin.

“You don’t have to say anything. But I want you to know that you _can_ say anything. If you’re sad, you don’t have to be alone with it. If you’re angry, be angry with me. If you have questions, just ask me. I don’t want to be coddled, especially not by my own family. I just want to be…” She paused as her voice broke, swallowing hard against the tightening knot in her throat before she continued, her red bottom lip quivering. “I’m still your Mom. I’ll always be your Mom. And this doesn’t change it, _nothing_ in the world could ever change that. Okay?”

He looked at her with silent disbelief in his watery, blue eyes and she was almost grateful when he turned away from her to look at the pond across the bench again, so he wouldn’t see the tears running down her cheeks at the sight of it.

And then he nodded.

…

The walk home was silent and when they stepped back into the warmth of their house, Nathan walked straight upstairs to his room.

Diane’s eyes followed him until he passed the top of the stairs and left her sight, then she stepped into the living room to find Kurt on the couch, his laptop and a handful of files laid out on the coffee table, his mind far away from the report he had been trying to finish all day.

He had worked from home a lot these last few days. They’d never talked about it, but she had a feeling it would stay that way for a while, and even though a loud part inside her shuddered in protest at the mere thought, an even louder voice reminded her that if the roles were reversed, she would do just the same.

“Hey.”, she said gently, her cold, stiff fingers dancing over his shoulder from behind before she sat down beside him. He leaned back into the couch, his arm immediately sneaking behind her back, pulling her into him as his thumb started roaming over her hip. His head dipped and he pressed a kiss on her hair before she could get a good look at his face.

His eyes were irritated, his cheeks and nose tinted in the lightest flush.

He’d been crying. Kurt never cried.

“What did she say?”, she asked, not caring to conceal the anxious tilt in her voice.

“She booked a flight while we were still on the phone.”, he said, his voice quiet and even lower than it usually was. “She’ll get here tomorrow afternoon.”

Diane sighed, deeply as if she were trying to rid herself of all the problems in the entire world with a single exhale, her eyes falling momentarily shut, the back of her head landing on his shoulder. “She shouldn’t have.”

“Yes, Di, she should have.”

“But she didn’t have to—”

“Diane.”, he said firmly, making her open her eyes again. “You’re her mother. She had to.”

Silence fell between them and Diane’s front teeth pressed into her bottom lip, a dark thought that had recurred in her mind steadily ever since she had been sitting in Doctor Carlsson’s office at the beginning of the week leaving a bitter taste on her tongue and before she could even decide against voicing it, he did.

“Despite what you’re thinking, you’re not… _inconveniencing_ anyone.”

She sighed again, two fingertips brushing momentarily over her bottom lip, leaving a pink blush on her skin. “I just don’t want you to stop living, just because I’m—”

She cut herself off by shooting him a guilt-ridden look, the end of her sentence lingering unsaid in the heavy air between them.

“We aren’t.”, he eventually broke through the tension. “Diane, life is coincidental. And this is… _you_ are a part of all our lives.”

She did not answer, not with words anyway. Instead, her arm slowly wandered up, slinging around his chest, her body curving further into his warmth.

She smelled like vanilla and fresh flowers, like the heavy scent of her favourite perfume, and the lightness of waking up with a smile on one’s lips. He had always liked how she smelled, had known from the first time he had caught a whiff of her scent that this was the one that made him feel at home.

“How did he take it?”, he asked gently, his fingertips curling into her hip.

“Not good.”, she mumbled, and he could hear the exhaustion in her low voice before she leaned up again and revealed it to him in her eyes. “Could you maybe talk to him? Will tried to reach me, I have to call him back.”

He nodded, pressing his lips against her forehead. “Sure. Say hello to Will from me.”

“Thanks, I will. Hey, wait.”, she said, her hand closing around his upper arm before he could get up as she pulled him close and placed a kiss on his lips, her eyes staying closed when they parted and he rested his forehead against hers. “Thank you, Kurt.”, she whispered and he smiled blindly.

“You already said that.”

“Can’t say it often enough.”

He tilted his head back, opening his eyes to hers and brushed a stray strand of blonde behind her ear, his short nails clicking against the golden earring he uncovered in the motion.

“I love you.”, he said earnestly, and it was as much a revelation of affection as it was a promise. And for a small moment, it lit up the blue in her eyes.

“Love you, too.”

…

The door to his room was left ajar, so Kurt pressed a soft knock against the polished wood and pushed it open a little further.

Nathan was sitting on his bed, his back propped up against the dark wooden headboard, an open book in his lap that he was not reading, his gaze seemingly caught by something near the window opposite the door, if only his thoughts.

“Hey. Can I come in?”

The only answer he got was a shrug, so he walked in and, almost awkwardly, sat down on the edge of the bed. He lifted his hand only to let it fall back in his lap, and he sighed, one corner of his lips shooting aside when he met his gaze.

“I’m sorry, kid.”

Nathan scoffed quietly. “Did she send you up here?”, he asked, almost making it sound like an accusation.

Kurt shrugged. “Yes, but I wanted to check on you anyway...” Slowly, his hand rose again and his fingers began to roam over the skin behind his ear. “She just doesn’t want you to worry about her.”, he finished and Nathan snorted contemptuously.

“That’s a laugh. How the fuck am I supposed to do that?”

Kurt tilted his head, a narrow twitch on his lips. “That’s the big old question.”, he said, watching as Nathan put the book on his nightstand, open and face down. He’d never cared much for bookmarks.

“Dad…”, he started, his voice suddenly shaky, almost thin compared to its usual deepness. He released a shaky exhale. “I don’t want to lose her. I mean…” He paused again, tears sneaking into his eyes before he looked down on his lap as if he were embarrassed of them. Kurt’s throat tightened at the sight. “I don’t think I _can_.”, he finished, quickly brushing his hand over his cheek as a single tear snuck down his skin.

Kurt swallowed, his shaky hand landing on his son’s shoulder. He did not look up. And it almost felt like it was probably better this way. He knew that seeing the distress in his eyes, his mother’s eyes, right now would be the final push to break him. And he couldn’t let that happen. Because it would force him to face that he felt just the same.

He could not live without her either. He couldn’t even begin figure out how he had ever done it before.

“I know, bud.”, he said softly, his fingers brushing over his shoulder. “I know.”

…

It was Chinese Friday.

Lily’s flight had been delayed by a casual three hours, so by the time Kurt and her and her four suitcases of luggage walked through the front door, Diane had already placed their old usual order from up until half a year ago when Lily had moved to Paris and was now sitting at the dining table, helping Nathan with his French paper.

It was a tradition that had started early on in the kids’ lives, back when Kurt had still worked as a freelance ballistics expert and often needed to travel for extended weekends. Diane was many things but she had never been a gifted cook, and after a long week of trying to balance being a lawyer and a mother of two, of precisely timed schedules between her and her husband, and driving him to the airport early on Friday mornings before taking the kids to school and going to work herself, only to pick him up again the following Monday if they were lucky, plus taking care of their marriage and trying to avoid starting to hate one another a year in, as so many couples did with or without the additional stressor of having children, she regularly found herself so exhausted on Friday afternoons that she did not have half the energy she would have needed to tempt fate and try to take on the hazardous challenge of throwing something together in the kitchen without setting herself, the children and the house collectively on fire, so she’d regularly pulled out the local Chinese restaurant’s menu once a week and called it a take-out day.

And by the time Kurt had accepted his desk job in Chicago, Chinese Fridays had become such a well-established part of the McVeigh household’s domestic bliss that they had lived beyond their necessity.

They looked up when they heard Kurt’s keys turning in the lock, standing up and Diane barely had the time to take her in when her daughter, for once towering slightly over her mother with her high heeled half boots on while Diane was wearing socks, embraced her in a tight hug.

“Oh, Mommy.”, she whispered, her cheek against hers, her arms wrapped around her neck, the sleeves of her teal, waisted woollen coat cold against her skin.

Diane’s eyes fell closed, a warm smile on her lips as she slung her arms around her slim frame, inhaling the scent of her long, wavy blonde hair. Bloomy like roses and sweet like pink champagne, deep as ground almonds and a slight trace of cigarette smoke.

“You didn’t need to come.”, she whispered back, her smile widening as Lily’s hold on her tightened.

“Yes, I did.”, she mumbled, her voice lower than it usually was. More serious than she had ever heard it before. “Are you okay? Do you need anything?”

Diane huffed out a breath of amusement and leaned away, meeting her eyes, a thin trace of black eyeliner and a curtain of long lashes softly framing green concern beneath her furrowed brows. “I need everyone to stop asking me that. And I’m fine. No pain, no fever, a little tired but that’s nothing new.” Her hands slid over her upper arms, the teal fabric that made her eyes look even more vibrant. “Right now, I’m just happy to see my daughter.”

Lily cast her a sad smile and shook her head, her eyes slowly losing their seriousness, and even though Diane could see that it was an act, her heart warmed with gratefulness. She would give her a moment of normalcy she had craved for all through the past days. “You guys are unbelievable.”, Lily said, her voice strong and bright, the trace of playful sarcasm tangible in the air as she looked around and eyed them in feigned exasperation. “I can’t leave you alone for so much as five months without one of you getting terminal cancer and another one starting to believe he can get away with forgoing haircuts.”

Nathan rolled his eyes, the closest thing to a smile he’d shown since yesterday lighting up his face. “I didn’t miss you either.”, he said dryly, and Lily giggled her warm laugh that sounded like a melody to the tunes of the crackling flames in the fireplace. Then she closed the gap between them and pulled him in for a warm hug.

“Sorry. I love you, I really do, but you look like the lovechild of _Edward Scissorhands_ and _Johnny Suede_. And with your face shape, in this economy? That’s just unacceptable.”

Diane smiled to herself, looking up when she felt his gaze on her, an almost wistful look in his eyes as her smile widened. He walked over, his hands closing around her waist and pressed a kiss on her lips, grinning silently against her when the kids began to fall into teasing protest. And for a moment, everything was normal.

For a moment, it felt like everything was going to be alright.

…

It was dark outside, the night sky wearing a sparkling, black dress, the stars twinkling in pleasing asymmetry as she lit her third cigarette of the night.

They had eaten together, talked and laughed, like she knew they had on most evenings back when she had still lived here, but it felt like tonight, everyone had tried to purposefully laugh a little louder, to be a little funnier, and a lot more happy than usual. Diane and Kurt had called it a night after she had made sure that no one but her would get their hands on the last spring roll and Nathan had gone upstairs, too.

Which left her here, outside, sitting on the stone steps to their backyard. It felt so small when she looked at it now, exhaling fine lines of smoke across the view that had once felt like her very own palace garden when she’d been little.

She placed the cigarette between her ruby red lips when suddenly, the back door cracked open behind her and she pressed her eyes shut, mentally preparing for the speech she was going to get.

_Busted._

But then she heard his voice, her posture immediately relaxing at the sound, the tension escaping her body with the smoky exhale she finally let out.

“You shouldn’t smoke here. Mom and Dad would freak out if they saw you.”

She smirked to herself, so wickedly that she almost forgot the prior tension in her spine when she had thought she’d found herself in the exact situation he described. “They won’t, they’re asleep.”, she said calmly, looking over her shoulder to arch an eyebrow at him challengingly. “Unless you’re planning on ratting me out?”

“No.”

She smiled and nodded to her side. “Sit.”, she said, handing him the small, red pack of Marlboros when he plopped down next to her on the top stair. “Want one?”

He shrugged and pulled out a cigarette, leaning forward when she gave him light.

Lily squinted her eyes at him as he inhaled the first puff with ease and exhaled slowly into the cold night air, the filter steady between his fingers, his wrist relaxed, everything about this picture almost too effortless. “Have you smoked before?”, she asked, a hint of admiration hidden in the midst of her mainly disapproving tone.

He shook his head and she quirked an eyebrow at him.

“I swear.”, he said, a hint of annoyance in his voice and she smiled, a look of relief washing through her eyes.

“I’m a terrible influence.”, she chuckled and he grinned, nudging her shoulder with his before her giggle got caught in her throat.

He didn’t look up at her, did not mention the small sob he heard her swallow or the coat of tears he knew he would see if he were to meet her gaze now, just drew in the smoke from the cigarette in silence as she did the same.

It tasted disgusting. But he didn’t mind.

She offered him another one when they finished and he accepted, lighting it when she began to talk, her whispered words accompanied by soft smoke slipping into the air between her ruby red lips.

“I can’t believe this is happening.”

He nodded, the mist leaving his lungs in a sigh. “I know.”

“Hey.”, she asked, a little louder, her voice a little steadier this time, but still gentler than it normally was, forcing him to meet her gaze. “How are you holding up?”

“I’m…” He paused, his head dipping before one corner of his lips shot aside, his voice barely more than a shaky huff of feigned humour. “I’m really fucking scared.”

She eyed him, chewing on the inside of her cheek for a while, until she nodded in understanding, something he had craved to see for the last thirty hours. Different as they were, his sister always understood him. She told him things how she saw them, without a filter, without making him feel like she was walking on eggshells around him, because she never did. “Me too.”, she said throatily, her eyes drifting to the night sky again, the cigarette back between her lips.

“Do you know how often I call her?”, she asked him as she tried to make out the brightest star to the north.

“Once a week.”, he answered without having to ponder on it, and Lily chuckled.

“No, kiddo, that’s how often I call all of you guys. But not Mom. I call Mom every day in her lunch break. Every freaking day.”, she told him, her voice softening as she went on. “You know, before I went to Paris, I always thought that I was closer to Dad. I always thought that he was the one who really understood me and that’s why he was always easier on me than her. But when I left, I realised…” She paused for a long inhale on her cigarette. “It really was the other way around.”

They sat with that for a short while before she shook her head and smiled through the tears that had formed in her eyes. “Don’t get me wrong, I love Dad to pieces. But he doesn’t give me shit like she does. And…” Her front teeth momentarily captured her trembling bottom lip. “I’m not done needing that yet, you know?”

Nathan dipped his head, his gaze falling to his socks. “The other night, before…”, he began, wincing as he stopped. “Before the diagnosis, I woke up with a bad feeling and found Dad in the kitchen, getting pills and tea for her because she had a fever. And I know that Mom’s been sick before, but for some reason…” He shrugged, drawing his eyes back up to hers. “Something just felt wrong. I wanted to skip school the next day to just, I don’t know, be around, I guess, but I didn’t. I went and not even two weeks later she tells me she has cancer.” The night air was cold on his cheeks as hot tears ran down on them, his voice catching in his throat. “It’s like… like a part of me knew she was going to die. And I didn’t even try to do anything about it.”

Lily eyed him, the expression in her watery eyes neutral before she sniffed and pursed her lips around the brown filter. “Don’t feel guilty.”, she rasped softly. “None of us saw this coming. If we had, I certainly wouldn’t have wasted the last five months trying to find myself on the other end of the world.”

He frowned at her, tilting his head as he finished his cigarette, pressed it on the stone step and aimed it in the small metal trash can at the foot of the stairs, just like she had showed him before. “Did it feel like a waste?”, he asked and she shrugged, flicking her cigarette after his.

“Not at the time, but in retrospect? For sure.”

“So, what if you hadn’t gone to Paris?”, he asked, brushing the back of his hand over his wet cheeks before he took the new cigarette she offered him wordlessly. His mind felt dizzy, his breathing heavy. But in this moment, it felt right. “You would have started college last summer, gone off to Columbia or Yale, and moved out anyway. You never wanted to stay in Chicago.”

She remained silent for a moment, her cigarette still unlit as she eyed him intently, until she scoffed and clicked the lighter, her smoke mingling with his, her teary eyes somewhere between amused and impressed. “Wow, someone grew up while I wasn’t looking.”

He shook his head. “Hardly. Nothing changed.”, he said, a new layer of tears drowning his sight as he caught his own blatant lie. Everything had changed. And it wouldn’t ever go back to the way it had been before.

The sob he had been holding back ever since he’d sat on the park bench yesterday finally escaped his throat. “Lily, she won’t even be at my graduation.”, he cried, looking down at first until he remembered that this was his sister. His sister whose lips were trembling as she tried to keep her own tears at bay when he dared to meet her gaze to be there for him and only him, despite of her own heart breaking painfully in her chest while he sobbed. “Everyone’s parents will be there. And my Mom is going to be dead.”

Wordlessly, she took his free hand in hers, entwining their fingers between them before he rested his head on her shoulder, the teal wool catching his tears, her presence keeping the dam he had been trying to hold closed wide open.

Slowly, she tilted her head to the side, letting it rest against his and she started crying silently with him, mascara tears streaming down her skin as her irritated gaze rose to the jet black night sky again. It looked like the stars had vanished, but the longer she looked, the more returned, as silently as they were sitting there.

Silent when there was nothing to say. Just being there when there was nothing else left to do.

A few feet above them, they were watched by a pair of light blue eyes, the curtain in front of the bedroom window lightly tucked open, her body kept warm by a sleek silk gown.

She crossed her arms, chewing on her bottom lip as she looked down, conflicted on whether she should smile or curl up and start sobbing like an infant.

She did not turn around when she heard the bed sheets ruffling softly behind her.

“Di?”, he rasped sleepily. “You okay?”

She nodded, her gaze still on the window. “I’m fine.”, she muttered softly. “Go back to sleep, you must be exhausted.”

But she had hardly finished her sentence when she already heard the padding of his bare feet on the floor, his steps worlds away from graceful, even on the carpet. He wrapped his warm, strong arms around her from behind and she tilted her head back, letting him press a kiss to her temple as something he spotted caused him to stop in his tracks.

“Are they smoking?”, he asked, suddenly seeming wide awake, and she rolled her eyes, a small smile on her lips as she drew her gaze back to the children.

“Yes.”, she said calmly, and he groaned.

“I should go down there.”, he said, freezing when her fingers closed firmly around his forearm.

“No.”, she said, stern finality in her voice. “Let them. They need this.”

She could feel the disagreement darkening his eyes behind her. “What, the cigarettes? Nathan is sixteen—”

“Not the cigarettes, Kurt.”, she cut him off gently, silencing him with ease as she watched their children shifting in their seats, throwing the filters in the trash before they hugged each other tightly, their bodies trembling in hot tears and sound sobs and a helplessness that was so much more cruel than anything they should have to face, ever. She blinked her tears away, her thumb brushing over his arm as she finished in a whisper. “Each other.”

…

Lily’s nose was buried in her old sketching book, her wrist flicking as she enhanced the highlights on the rose petals she’d drawn.

Suddenly, she threw the book and her pencil aside and shot up, pacing out of the living room and into the entrance hall when she heard the door lock twisting, meeting the grim faces of her parents.

“So?”, she asked expectantly as she stood with her hands on her hips. “How did it go?”

Her face suddenly fell when Diane shook her head, casting her a sympathetic smile that did not reach her eyes. “Later. Give us a moment, okay?”, she said lowly, her voice thin, before she turned to hang up her scarf and coat, kicking off her pointed heels before she walked over to the staircase and up to the bedroom, closely followed by Kurt, his jaw clenched, his eyes dark, without another word, without another glance.

The sudden, loud bang that echoed through the quiet house as the bedroom door was forcefully shut made Lily cringe.

Her parents had fought before of course, they were too different to always be able to find common ground. There had been nights when she had woken up to raised voices from the living room, hushed again as soon as they realised that the children might hear them. There had been awkward evenings at the dinner table where she noticed them forcefully avoiding one another’s eyes, the tension in the room increasing with her mother’s failed attempts to lull her and Nathan into frivolous conversations about school and anything else her distracted mind could come up with.

But they never showed it in front of them, always kept it together in the useless attempt of not letting the kids catch on.

And she knew that no matter what exactly had happened in the last three hours since they had left, it was safe to say that the doctor’s appointment had not gone well.

Upstairs, behind the closed door, Kurt’s thinned eyes fell on his wife who was standing a couple of feet away from him, her head dipped, while she gently rubbed the bridge of her nose between her thumb and index finger.

They had not spoken a word on the entire drive home.

“Say it.”, she suddenly broke the silence, dropping her hand to her side, piercing blue eyes meeting his gaze.

“What?”, he asked in exhaustion, his voice a low groan, and she knew how much it took him to keep it at bay, knew just how little it would take her to break his poise if she wanted to.

She shrugged in feigned indifference. “Whatever you have to. You’re angry with me, so go ahead! Shout at me, yell until the neighbours hear you for all I care. Do your worst, I can handle it.”

His lips parted and she straightened her posture, ready for him to explode. But his voice remained quiet when he spoke, despite the dark fire in his green eyes, despite his forcefully clenched jaw, the low sound almost enough to make her go mad because she knew that trying to keep his cool right now was his way of not letting her win. “You’re making a mistake. You’re not taking into consideration that there are people here who care about you. It’s like you don’t want to fight for yourself, and you’re not even willing to do it for us.”

One of her brows shot up and she pursed her lips, the icy look in her eyes that could have frozen hell over concealing the flash of pain that had burst through them at his words. Her hand shot up and in an unconscious movement, her fingers brushed through her silky, blonde hair, before she crossed her arms firmly beneath her chest. “Is that it?”, she asked harshly and he scoffed, shaking his head as he cast her a scornful glare.

“For now. I’d love to hear an explanation though, because I really can’t figure out how someone like you can suddenly go completely blind to everything that’s going on around them.”

Diane swallowed hard, the dryness in her throat almost making her choke, her face softening lightly behind the masquerade. “Kurt, I don’t want to lose my hair.”, she began lowly, flinching at the thin, pathetic sound of her own voice. “I don’t want to puke the last life out of me. I’m already losing my appetite, I’ve already lost weight from the leukaemia alone, and it’s just a glimpse at what chemo would do to me, it would make me…” She paused, taking a deep breath before tears could form in her eyes and confirm that she was exactly what she was trying so hard to avoid. “Weak. And I don’t want to look like… like a dying person, Kurt. What is it worth living six more months, which mind you, isn’t even granted, if I would only be suffering? When I wouldn’t look like myself or feel like myself or have my family treat me like I’m still myself?”

She did not want to be their patient. She did not want Lily and Nathan’s concerned looks on her when she would not be able to stomach her food in the morning after they’d heard her throwing up the night before, she did not want Kurt to catch a look at the discomfort on her features when saw her bald head after she would take off her wig before going to bed. She was their mother and his wife. That was who she was, how she wanted them to see and, someday, whenever that day would come, remember her. She was their mother and his wife. And she would not give this up to die as anything less.

Kurt’s left brow was furrowed, his lips closed in silence, forming a thin, sullen line as his eyes held her gaze, as if they were daring her to look away.

“What are you thinking?”, she asked quietly, almost beginning to assume that he had not heard her, until he shrugged.

“Just trying to figure out how you’re really doing.”

A scoff slipped out between her lips, her arms tightening around her abdomen. “You know how I’m doing. You can actually have it in black and white if you’d like to take a look at my medical reports.”, she mumbled grimly, sending a flash of anger through his dark eyes at the thick trace of sarcasm in her voice.

“I actually have no idea how you’re doing, Diane.”, he snapped, her fists unclenching at the sudden display of his fury. His silence in the past weeks had been haunting, the pain in his eyes enough to take her breath away, but this she could take. His anger was something she could deal with. “You don’t talk to me, _really_ talk to me about this. You don’t let me in, you keep saying you’re fine every time I so much as look at you, like you’re scared I won’t be able to keep it together if you—heaven forbid—dare to show me what’s really going on inside your head. Instead you bombard me with all this in front of your doctor, without even giving me a head’s up. How do you suppose I should be weak about this when you’re acting like this is just another chore for you that you’d rather handle on your own, as if it doesn’t affect all of us?”

Her arms dropped limply to her sides, angry laughter escaping her as the deep red flush of her skin on her cheeks and chest darkened.

“Oh, so you think this is easy for me! Just because I’m not being a bitch to you or wasting my _very_ limited time by falling into deep depression, that this is _easy_ for me? Kurt, I’m _dying_ , and our kids aren’t even of age yet. You think it’s easy for me that I’m never going to see our son graduate high school? That everyone’s parents will be there, everyone except for poor Nathan’s mother because she died before he could even get his first college acceptance letter? You think I’m content knowing that I’m never going to see Lily pregnant? That our grandchildren won’t ever meet me and all I’ll ever be for them is some godforsaken photograph and the same four anecdotes you three will take turns talking about when you fall into tipsy melancholy during late hours at family gatherings? I want these things, Kurt, I want to see Lily in her wedding dress, I want to be there to hug Nathan when he gets his heart broken for the first time, I want to travel to Costa Rica with you someday, I want all those things so much but I will _never_ have them because I’ll be gone before either of us can even spend another second thinking about more moments I’m going to miss out on, and it breaks my fucking heart, Kurt, because they’re all I’ve dreamed of from the moment I met you.”

Her voice broke and she swallowed a sob, her vision of him blurry through the tears that had formed in her eyes. “Of growing old, really old, with you. And to just live long enough to know for sure that they’re going to be safe and happy, and to be there for them when they aren’t. It hurts more than anything has ever hurt me before. And I want to scream and break every last plate we own, and I want to cry until everybody in this world knows how unfair life really is.” She paused with a sharp gasp for air, quickly brushing the salty wetness off her cheeks before a new layer came wandering down on them. “But it wouldn’t change anything. It wouldn’t make it any easier. And it wouldn’t change the fact that I’ll have to go anyway.”

She looked at him, silent for a while as she eyed his expression through the blur of her tears that were starting to shoot sharp pain through her right temple. He stayed quiet, his jaw beginning to unclench as his stern eyes held onto hers like they were the last lifeline in sight.

Diane sniffed, rubbing the back of her hand across her cheeks again, her voice a raspy mess, a broken fraction of what it usually was. “I know I should have told you that I don’t want the chemotherapy. I know I still don’t let you in enough and I know how hard that is for you. But it’s not about trust, Kurt, I trust you more than anyone else, probably more than I even trust myself. It’s just that I simply didn’t know how to tell you, because I was… _afraid_ of seeing the look on your face. And that was stupid, because I have to accept this, and I have to accept the fact that this is going to hurt you. And so do you, Kurt. No matter how hard it is, you can’t pretend that we’re just going to wake up one day to find out that it was all just a bad dream. It’s a nice thought, but it’s not the reality we have to face. And it will be hard, and it will be painful, but it’s going to work out. I don’t like it, I actually hate everything about it, but I know it’s true. Just don’t you dare think for even a second that it makes this easy for me.”

Kurt’s eyes finally left hers. Taking a deep, shaky breath, he stumbled over to the bed and sank down on the comforter. This was the most she had talked to him in two weeks, he realised as the vision of his knees blurred before him, a harsh sob suddenly bursting through the silence in the room.

He only noticed that she had come to his side and sat down next to him when he felt her arms wrapping around him, letting him bury his face in her neck and breathe in her scent, letting his fingers sink into her blouse, bunching up the silk in his fist, giving him something to hold onto, letting his tears dampen its collar.

“Di, I’m so scared.”, he choked out. She pressed her lips together, one of her brows furrowing harshly as a small, nasal whimper escaped her with a wave of tears.

She nodded. Her arms tightening around him. “Me too.”, she hiccupped, her eyes falling shut as she dipped her head, her lips colliding with his crown.

“I don’t want to lose you.”, he muttered under his shaky, audible breath, repeating the words quietly, again and again, like a nightmare she could not seem to escape, only that she knew that she was never going to wake up from this.

A soft sob shuddered through her body, her fingertips curling deeper into the fabric of his flannel shirt. “I don’t want to lose you either.”, she whispered, knowing that even though telling him this would not make it easier, knowing that admitting it would not make it go away.

It would not make this any better, it was not a solution to any of this. But it was what she felt. And she would rather choose to tell him now while she still could.

…

Diane’s condition got worse before any one of them, including herself, really saw it coming. They say ignorance is bliss, but sometimes ignorance was just the gateway to a bigger catastrophe caused by a plain lack of foresight that easily could have been avoided.

Kurt and Nathan were sitting on the carpet in the living room, across from each other, the coffee table and Kurt’s old chess set between them. Lily was lying upside down on one of the creme white armchairs, her hair hanging on the floor, her long legs dangling over the headrest, a Russian novel held up over her head as she read and threw casual remarks on how lame playing chess was into the room, while Diane was upstairs taking a shower.

“Did you know that the longest chess game theoretically possible is 5949 moves? I have no idea what that would be in minutes and I quite frankly really don’t wish to know, but I can give a pretty good guess as to how many friends the average person could find in that timespan instead of wasting it by playing chess.”

“And how many friends could you have made while you were trying to memorize that fact?”, Nathan asked as he made his move, robbing Kurt of his tower.

“Three and a half, but I could easily catch up after because knowing useless fun facts makes me super approachable and quirky, as opposed to what being a chess player does to one’s social status.”

Semi-silence fell between them as neither Kurt nor Nathan wanted to give her the satisfaction of laughing and Lily got lost in the next paragraph of her book, while the TV spat out the evening newscast.

“And did you know,” Lily continued after around twenty seconds of quiet. “That some dude named Alan Turing developed the first computer program for playing chess in 1951? But back then, there was actually no computer powerful enough to process it, so he would test it by doing the calculations himself and playing according to the results. And that’s why the poor, socially isolated soul had to spend several minutes on every single move. I mean gee, I hope he wasn’t the one who found out about the 5949 moves maximum. I wonder if people even lived that long back in the fifties. Wait, do people even live that long in the twenty-first century?”

“The fact that I can’t believe how terrible you are at math set aside, do you _ever_ stop talking?”, Nathan mumbled, and Kurt cast him a grin.

“Not if I can help it. My logorrhoea makes me very—”

“Approachable and quirky?”

“I was going to say _fun at parties_ , but who am I to decline a good compliment, so I’ll take—"

Lily never finished her sentence. And Kurt and Nathan never finished their game of chess.

The TV suddenly seemed too loud, the stock market report the young brunette journalist in the bright, royal blue blazer babbled about blasting through their ears as Kurt ran out of the room and up the carpeted staircase at the sudden, panicked cry of his name.

None of them had heard the shower stopping minutes ago because the damned TV had been too loud.

He didn’t have enough time to make up his mind on what he expected, but when he pushed the bathroom door open, Kurt’s heart sat out a beat.

“Oh my god, what happened? Are you okay?”, he choked out, as he fell to his knees beside her, reaching for a small towel as he tried to see through all the blood, deep red on white tiles that seemed to attempt to blind him. One would think that someone in his profession had seen enough unspeakable things to be able to handle seeing a little blood. But this was not just ‘a little’ blood. And it normally wasn’t his wife’s.

The trail seemed to have started in the big puddle in the shower, before she had dragged herself out of there to try and stop the bleeding, until she had collapsed, naked, in the middle of the room on the light grey rug. At least it had been grey until now.

“Where’s the blood coming from, Diane?”, he almost shouted at her, clutching the towel in his hand until he almost could not feel his fingertips anymore.

“My ankle.”, she sobbed, tears streaming down her face as she shuddered, and he started tightly knotting the towel around the spot she pointed at with a shaky hand, red smears all over her skin. “I, I was just shaving my legs and I must have cut myself and now it won’t stop bleeding. Kurt, I’m so sorry—”

“When? When did the bleeding start?”, he cut her off, his voice starting to sound hysterical, as he tried to apply more pressure on the wound that had already bled through the three layers of the towel he had just wrapped around it.

“I don’t know, maybe ten minutes ago?”

“Jesus! Why didn’t you call for me earlier?”, he hissed under his breath, reaching for another towel and securing it around her ankle as well as he could.

“Kurt, I’m sorry, I thought I could take care of it, but it… I—I couldn’t, and I panicked. I’m so sorry.”

He looked up at her, his gaze softening at the sight of her tearstained face. He could see it in her irritated eyes, the look of guilt. The newscast was still going on about the stock market downstairs, loud enough to reach up and be audible in here. “Di, we have to go to the ER. Now.”, he said, his voice now soft but urging in his attempt to make her skip over the disagreement he was expecting, and she sniffed and nodded.

“Okay.”, she gasped in a shuddering exhale, and his pulse started pounding wildly in his ears. He knew she did not like feeling as if she was making a fuss, even when it was about something serious. And right now, he would have taken all her past protests against his care for her over this. Because _this_ was scaring the hell out of him.

“What’s wro—Oh fuck, Mom!”, Lily suddenly screamed out behind him, Diane’s reddened eyes widening in panic.

“Don’t come in here!”, Kurt said sternly, but a split second later Lily was already kneeling beside him, her light blue jeans soaking up the blood to her knees, the ends of her long, blond waves of hair falling in red as she hastily helped her mother into a t-shirt, underwear and a pair of sweatpants. He had no idea where the clothing suddenly came from.

“What the hell happened?”, she asked him, raw terror in her voice that did not leave a single trace on her face as she helped Diane into her clothes.

“She cut her ankle while shaving, it’s just a small cut, but…”

He stopped and he didn’t have to finish anyway. They’d all read through the list of symptoms they would have to be prepared for multiple times the second they had found out about Diane’s diagnosis.

They could have been prepared for this. They _should_ have been prepared for this.

“I’m taking her to the hospital.”, he said, gathering more towels for the way, and she shot him a gravely concerned look he had never seen from her before.

“Dad, I can drive her, too.”, she said determinedly, and he shook his head while scooping Diane up into his arms from the blood-soaked rug.

“No, she can’t walk and you can’t carry her. You stay with Nathan, make sure he doesn’t walk in here and—"

He stopped when he turned around and met his son’s eyes in the doorway.

He was shaking, silent tears running down his cheeks.

And he suddenly realised that Diane had fallen silent moments ago. She was the only one who had noticed him until now.

…

The bathroom tiles and the shower were sparkling clean, the rug gone when they got back home around two hours later. The TV had finally been turned off, the chess set was neatly placed back on its spot in the cupboard behind the door again and the living room was empty.

They changed and cleaned up the last streaks of dried blood they had not caught at the hospital, him helping her because she was barely able to keep herself standing upright, before Kurt put Diane in bed and she fell asleep the moment her head touched the silky pillow. He pressed a short kiss on her forehead, knowing he would have to wake her again in an hour when it was time to check the bandage on the two tape stitches on her ankle.

Nathan was in bed with his glasses still on, a book flat open and face down on his chest, headphones buried in his ears, the college punk that emerged from them so loud that Kurt could hear it the second he stepped past the doorway to find him fast asleep, snoring lightly as he had always done, even as a baby.

He gently tucked the headphones out of his son’s ears and pulled the glasses off his nose, placed them and the book on the nightstand and pulled the covers up to his chin before he turned the lights out. He looked so peaceful when he was asleep. It was endearing on any other day, but tonight it felt like a mocking, painful reminder that his dreams were the one certain chance at peacefulness the boy would get for now.

Lily’s old room was empty, so he went back downstairs and found her on the stone stairs to the backyard, a glass of red wine in one hand, a cigarette that was already burned down to the filter in the other.

She did not care to flinch or try and hastily throw it in the metal trash can at the foot of the steps when he sat down beside her, did not even care to turn her head and look at him to acknowledge his presence.

“Aren’t you cold?” he asked, eying the slight shudder in her body that was now clad in a thin sweater and a pair of black skinny jeans, her hair slightly dishevelled, the blonde strands she usually wore in waves straight, damp and clean. She looked like her mother on a day off.

Her eyes finally left the stars above them and met his after they’d run up and down his frame, lingering exaggeratedly on his worn out, grey flannel shirt. She scrunched up her nose. “Aren’t _you_?”, she asked, the playful mockery in her tone humbled by the soft tremble in her low voice.

“Nope. But you take after your mother and to her, everything below sixty degrees is like a personal threat to her life.”

She gave him a half-hearted smirk, flicked her wrist and threw the cigarette butt in the trash, before she reached beside her and gestured with a small red packet of Marlboros. “Do you mind?”, she asked lowly, in the silent understanding between them that they had had ever since she had started smoking three years ago. They all knew, but they didn’t talk about it, not since the huge fight she had had with Diane after she’d found an empty pack of Lucky Strikes in her jacket pocket while doing laundry. Lily tried not to rub it under their noses, usually only smoked outside the grounds of the house so that they didn’t have to acknowledge it by getting an ashtray for her and making their acceptance of it official. The stone steps to the backyard were a rare occasion, reserved for when she was in a rebellious mood.

Or darker days, like right now.

Kurt shook his head and she cast him a small, grateful smile before she took a generous sip of wine and lit a cigarette, her gaze drifting up to the sky again.

“How is she?”, she asked after she had finished half of her smoke, right as the silence between them threatened to grow uncomfortable. She usually wasn’t silent for this long.

“She’s asleep. They patched her up with, I don’t know, stitch tapes or whatever they call them—”

“Tape stitches, Daddy.”, she cut him off softly, her voice almost too low to hear, before she drew the cigarette back to her lips.

“Right. The bleeding didn’t stop because, well, I mean she cut her ankle and that’s tricky enough as it is, and since she…” His voice broke off for a small, telling moment. “ _You know_ … easy bleeding is a common symptom. Bruising, too. Her knee and elbows look like she’s been in a bar fight. But she’s fine, just a little out of it from all the pills. And I know she feels bad about you guys seeing her like that.”, he finished, trying not to think about the sound of her soft sobs in the car all the way to the hospital.

Lily blinked away the tears in her eyes, swallowing another sharp, healthy sip of the dry wine in her generously filled glass as if she were attempting to flush the sob in her throat away that had formed while he’d been speaking, a long drag on her cigarette following like a step further to the numbness she was suddenly craving for at her realisation.

He could not even name her illness anymore.

“I threw the rug out.”, she told him almost casually after a moment, like a passing mention. “Nate tried to save it, but it was a hopeless case.”

“Thanks. But I wish you’d just left it. I would’ve taken care of it.”

“You’re already doing enough.”

“I feel like I’m not doing anything.”

She tilted her head and cast him a keen look, squinting her eyes, looking like the image of her mother. “You’re doing plenty.”

He swallowed uncomfortably, trying to block out the voice in his head that was trying to convince him of the opposite.

“Did Nathan say anything?”, he asked after a moment of silence.

“Not really, he was pretty shaken up. I tried to get him out of there after you left, but he wouldn’t let me. When I started cleaning up, he insisted on helping me, then went straight to his room after we were done, without a word. Fell asleep around half an hour ago, I think.”

Kurt sighed, his chest feeling heavy as it fell to the sound, feeling like his ribcage was too tight around his heart, like a cage he had been trapped in ever since the night Diane had told him about her diagnosis. “He shouldn’t have had to see that. Neither of you, actually.”

A short scoff escaped her and she shook her head, her gaze still on the night sky, as if she had spotted a funny looking constellation. “What’s the point of not _seeing_ something happening when it’s happening to you anyway? The former at least has the upside of giving you the opportunity to maybe, if you’re lucky, being able to help here and there and not ending up feeling like a completely useless waste of oxygen.”

His eyes narrowed in thought and he tilted his head aside. “I suppose that’s not wrong.”

“It isn’t. You know that as much as I do.” She put the cigarette between her lips again, took one last deep inhale, then pressed it against the stone stairs next to her feet and flicked it in the trash, before she looked at him again. “Daddy? How are you?”

Kurt shrugged, feigned indifference contradicting the troubling gravity in his eyes. “Tired. But okay.”, he mumbled.

Lily pursed her lips, her eyes thinning at him below her frown. “Dad, you don’t have to be strong in front of me.”, she said softly. “Listen, I get that you want to keep it together when Mom is around, but you’re honestly not fooling anyone, not her, not Nate, not even yourself. And especially not me.”

“I’m not—", he began and she cut him off gently.

“Yes, you are. I saw your face up there earlier, and it almost scared me as much as seeing her like that. Like it or not, this is going to break you if you try to keep this act up. And…” She tilted her head. “I’m sorry for sounding selfish, but I’m already losing my Mom. So I really can’t afford to lose my Dad, too.”

Kurt remained silent.

They did not speak another word for the next half hour until they went inside and wished each other a good night, knowing that neither one of them would get any sleep and both too tired to acknowledge it.

They were still sitting outside when the door to Nathan’s room opened cautiously, soft, barefoot steps breaking through the silence. She heard them, her eyes opening slowly against the straining fatigue from her medication she felt pulling on her body as if it were trying to put her to sleep only to rip her in half as soon as it would succeed. And she heard the fingertips lightly tapping against the bedroom door.

“Come in.”, she said, worrying for a moment that her voice wouldn’t be strong enough to sound through the closed door. But then it opened.

They found each other’s eyes, staring at the shared pain they found in them, until Diane shifted, pushing herself up to rest her back against the headboard before she folded the sheets on Kurt’s side back. She nodded towards it and Nathan slipped in beside her, sitting there almost awkwardly until she laid her arm around him and let him lean his head against her shoulder.

“Can’t sleep?”, she asked softly, and he shrugged, pulling a small, sad smile from her. “I’m okay.”, she tried in a weak attempt of reassurance, swallowing hard when slowly, he wrapped his arms around her in a silent answer of that he didn’t believe her but did not have the energy nor the wish to argue right now, burying his face in the silk of her shirt.

His shoulders shuddered beneath her arm as he cried quietly.

Her free hand landed on his head, her fingers threading gently through his hair. “It’s alright, honey.”, she whispered, her breathing heavy as his small gasp for air sounded through the room, a quiet sob muffled against her shoulder.

She dipped her head, stroking his hair as she placed a small kiss on his head, her eyes falling closed as she whispered, “You’re gonna be alright.”, not knowing if she was saying it to reassure him or herself, and not knowing if the answer really made a difference in the end.

…

“Oh Natty, look at you! All grown with your little coffee and your little emo phase, it’s adorable!”

“Shut up.”, he said, rolling his eyes when she teasingly brushed her hand over his hair on her way to the coffee pot.

It was Sunday, the first snow of the year had fallen overnight and Kurt was outside, clad in his brown suede jacket despite the freezing cold, shovelling while the children were still in their pyjamas. He had barely shaken his head when Nathan had asked him if he needed help. He wanted something to do and clearing the driveway would at least keep him busy for the next hour or so.

“Is Mom still asleep?”, Lily suddenly pulled him out of his thoughts, drawing his gaze away from the windows and over to her as she sat down on the kitchen counter and sipped at her coffee.

Diane had had another fever the day before and only started to find sleep around three in the morning. As had Kurt. As had all of them.

“No, she was here when I got up. But she went back to bed after a cup of tea, said she was a bit tired.”

“The fever’s gone down?”

“Yes, I think so. She looked a little better, although it’s hard to tell lately.”

Lily nodded, slowly nibbling on her bottom lip in thought before she took another sip of coffee. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Mom taking a nap before. And this woman used to work sixty hours per week.”, she mumbled and Nathan looked down to his socks.

A few moments of silence passed between them as they drank their coffee, unsure of what to say, until she made him look up again.

“I’m staying.”, she said determinedly, and he cast her a narrow smirk, shrugging.

“To be honest, I kinda figured as much.”

Lily shook her head, her feet dangling over the floor, the movement almost seeming nervous in contrast to everything else about her, from her tone to her old, woollen Christmas leggings, white patterns of fir trees and ornaments printed on red that screamed about every word of the language but self-consciousness. “No, I mean I’m staying. For real.”

“You mean after…”

“Yes.”, she cut through the silence, sparing him from having to finish the sentence. “When this is… when it’s over, I want to be here. I was going to start college next year anyway and I might as well do it here in Chicago, it doesn’t really make a difference.” She brushed her long, uncombed hair back and shrugged. “I’m calling my landlord tomorrow to give up my apartment in Paris, I have a three-month notice period but, I mean, fuck it. I already quit my job at the café and I have enough savings to cover the rent I’ll still have to pay, so I won’t have to drag Mom and Dad into this when they already have enough worries to provide for a small village. There’ll be lots of paperwork and I’ll have to find a way to get my things here, but I’ll figure it out.”

Her lips closed and she looked at him expectantly, trying to figure out what he was thinking rather than quietly asking him to say something.

“Just don’t tell Mom.”, she added with a little more lightness in her tone. “I don’t want her thinking that I’m throwing my young and wild, feminist spirited dreams and independency away because of… Well, you know.”

With a small tilt of her head, she brought the mug back to her lips and blew lightly on the coffee that was not steaming anymore before she took another sip.

Nathan squinted his eyes. “Aren’t you in a way?”, he asked lowly and a muffled scoff escaped her before she swallowed the gulp of coffee and let out a warm laugh into the silent house.

“No, silly.”, she said, shaking her head amusedly. “Paris was amazing, but things change. And I can’t leave you and Dad alone here if I want so much as another word spoken in this house in between my visits on your respective birthdays and Christmas. You two aren’t really good at what they generally call basic human communication.”

“You sound like Mom.”

“Why, thank you.”, she said earnestly, a smile on her lips that was more sincere and appreciative than he had expected. Her gaze drifted off to the window, looking over the driveway and slowly, the corners of her lips dropped, her eyes darkening seriously. “Nate, Dad isn’t doing well.”

His eyebrows shot up. “I don’t exactly think we can _expect_ him to be doing well.”, he retorted and her frown only deepened.

“That’s not what I was trying to say. I just mean… I talked to him the other night when they came back from the ER and he’s really suffering. He won’t let it out, not as long as he can avoid it, I’m guessing it’s because he doesn’t want us to think that we can’t let him be there for us through this because he’s not strong enough. I don’t know if he shows it in front of Mom, but even if he does, we both know she won’t be around for the big fall. And it’s not going to be pretty, especially when he’s planning to try and handle that on his own. A facade like that can work for some time and I know he’s strong enough to make it work much longer than he should, but some day, it’ll come crashing down on him. And I’d rather be around for that. To help him pick up the pieces.”

They remained silent for a while, both trapped in similar thoughts that were loud enough to compensate the quiet between them. After a while, Nathan’s head rose.

“What did he say that night?”, he asked and Lily shrugged, gesturing with her mug. The coffee had turned cold by now.

“Not much, as per usual. But Nate, he’s scared. And I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen him scared, especially not like that. And I knew that it was bad before, but it honestly scared the shit out of me.”

Outside of the kitchen, next to the doorframe in the corridor, the back of Diane’s head collided with the wall between her and the kids, without a noise. Her eyes fell shut, pushing a single tear down her cheeks before she walked back upstairs again, looking for another round of sleep she craved and already knew she would not find.

…

It felt as if someone had stopped the time inside their house. Nathan was at school and Kurt had been called in to the office for a meeting he had reluctantly left for after asking both of them if they would really, really, _really_ be okay and making them promise to call in case anything happened.

Lily sat at the dining table, her laptop in front of her, squinting her eyes as she carefully read over the terms of the lease for her apartment. This would be easier if she could just ask Diane for help, but since that was out of the question, she was left here researching every third sentence in a contract she had signed blindly half a year ago.

No, she would definitely never tell her mother about this.

Suddenly, she pushed the laptop closed, turning to see her standing in the doorway, dressed up in a red pantsuit that matched her lipstick, her hair falling just over her shoulder in neat waves. To an outsider, the pale colour of her sunken cheeks, or the way her once tightly fitting blazer hung a little loosely around her waist would not even have been detectable. To an outsider, she would have looked just like she always had.

“Let’s get out of here.”, she said, a small grin forming on her painted lips as she eyed the flustered look on her daughter’s face. “Hiding something?”, she asked teasingly with a small nod the laptop she had pushed soundly shut, and Lily swallowed, shaking her head.

“Where do you want to go?”, she asked, as if she had not heard her question.

“Just out, I don’t really care. All I know is that if I stay in this house for five more minutes, I’m going to lose my mind and probably start a fire in the attic.”, she said and her heart warmed at the genuine smirk on Lily’s face. “There’s a Marina Abramović exhibition at the MCA. Sound good?”

Lily eyed her, carefully studying her face as if she were scanning her for a reason why this possibly could not be a good idea. Diane began to shift on her feet, forcing herself to keep smiling, until Lily got up and nodded. “Sounds perfect.”

…

They went to see the exhibition, walking side by side, the pace engraved in their legs like a biological clock, ticking in silent understanding from all the time they had spent in art museums together over the years. They used to go every other weekend back when Lily had still lived with them, back when everything had always felt as normal as it did right now.

Later, they went back to the car so Diane could take her meds in quiet. Lily was just about to start the engine, when Diane’s hand curled around her arm.

“Let’s not go back yet.”, she said gently, before they left the car and went for a small walk through Lake Shore Park right next to the Museum Of Contemporary Art, into the direction of the harbour where they found a slightly decayed wooden bank and Lily suggested sitting down for a while in feigned casualty, without directly acknowledging the soft panting she heard under Diane’s breath with every other step they took.

It was cold, but the midday sun shone brightly down on them as they sat, wrapped into their coats, talking about everything and nothing, until Lily slowly reached into her purse, her voice so small it was almost whiffed away by the wind.

“Would you mind if… if I had a smoke?”, she asked cautiously and her face softened when Diane cast her a smile. She shook her head and watched as she lit one.

“Can you spare me one of those?”, she asked and Lily started coughing on her first inhale as she burst out in laughter, looking at her like she had just said outed herself as a flat earther.

“Mom, no!”, she laughed and Diane squinched up her face.

“Oh, come on, what’s the worst thing that could happen? That I get cancer?”

Lily’s laughter fell silent and she took a long drag on her cigarette before she opened the packet of Marlboro reds again and held it out for her.

“A little blunt but touché, I guess.”, she mumbled, a hint of amusement shining in her green eyes as she gave her light.

Diane nodded in thanks and cast her a half-serious, warning look out of the corner of her eye when she exhaled. “Don’t tell your father.”, she said and one of Lily’s eyebrow arched up.

“He’ll know.”

“Yeah, he always does. But still.”

She shook her head, squinting her eyes in disbelieve as she looked at her mother dragging on the cigarette like she had done little else in her life, feeling like she had just run into one of her teachers in a lingerie store. “What do you mean, always?”, she asked and Diane chuckled.

“Oh, nevermind.”

For a moment, content silence fell between them. The wind pushed light waves across the lake, the surface of the water glistening in the sun, the busy city behind their backs, peaceful sparkles in front of them, all overshone by the comforting familiarity between them.

“We’ve come a long way from you yelling at me for this to you scrounging a smoke from me.”, Lily teasingly pulled her mother out of her thoughts, and she cast her a meaningful look.

“You were barely seventeen! And, well, just a little too much like me.”, she added gently and Lily’s grin widened as she tilted her head.

“So, you really used to smoke, huh?”, she asked, shaking her head in a mocking, disapproving manner.

“Like a chimney, back in law school.”

Lily nodded slowly, her gaze momentarily caught by a school of birds flying over the water, heading south, before she looked up again. “What made you quit?”, she asked, and Diane shrugged, putting the cigarette back between her crimson red lips.

“Oh, you know, meeting your Dad. Deciding I wanted to be a mother. And then wanting to at least try to be a good role model.”

She watched as the corners of her daughter’s ruby red lips twitched aside, expecting a witty comeback on how she had obviously ditched the role model aspect of it all somewhere on her way, a witty comeback that never came.

“Well, you were that.”, she said almost too softly, casting her a smile. “Still are, actually.”

Diane’s eyes warmed, her smile widening, until she remembered what she had actually been meaning to talk about.

“Hey, whatever happened with that guy you’ve been seeing in Paris? Paul?”, she asked, her tone overly casual.

“Nothing, Mom. It wasn’t that serious.”

Her brows shot up and she cast her a sceptical look. “It was serious enough for you to mention him on the phone.”, she reminded her, and Lily huffed out a breath of quiet laughter, cold smoke escaping between her lips.

“Yeah, but you cannot judge it based on that. I basically tell you everything.”

“I see…”, she continued slowly, raising suspicion in Lily’s green graze. “So, nothing holding you there anymore, huh?”

Lily frowned for a split second, before she looked away towards the lake and groaned. “I can’t believe the little rat told you.”, she said exaggeratedly dark, and Diane chuckled, shaking her head.

“He didn’t, you know he would never. I heard you talking in the kitchen. By the way, I can look over your lease with you when we’re home, if you want.”

Wordlessly, they pressed out the burned down cigarettes, Lily’s gaze momentarily searching for a trash can before Diane held out her hand, a tissue in the other. “I got it.”, she said, rolling the filters into the tissue and slipping it back in her purse. Lily was holding out the pack when she turned back to her and they each lit another one, taking a couple exhales before Lily spoke with a low voice.

“Dad’s not doing well. And I don’t want to leave them alone here.”

Diane nodded, understanding. A cargo ship sailed across the lake, slowly passing their spot on the bank, distracting the even waves the wind had swirled in the water. “Me neither.”, she said softly, and Lily’s face fell.

“Mom, I didn’t mean it like that.”, she burst out.

Diane took a pull on her cigarette, smiling to herself. “I know. Just stating a fact.”

Lily’s brow furrowed and Diane shook her head. She should not read too much into it. It just was what it was, and it could not always be what they would have wished for.

“So, what about all the plans you had?”, she asked. “Travelling through Italy? Joining an art program at the Côte d’Azur?”

Lily shrugged, breathing in a new wave of smoke. “I can make new plans.”, she remarked, her tone indifferent, her lips slightly pursed.

“Like what?”, she asked, scoffing amusedly when Lily’s gaze stayed sternly on her, her eyelids almost fluttering from the suppressed urge to roll her eyes. “Oh, don’t look at me like that, I know you’ve got to have one already. After all, you’re _my_ daughter.”

“I’m my father’s daughter too, and I’ve never even seen him making a shopping list before.”, Lily said dryly, and Diane tilted her head.

“True. But we both know you take after me.”

She took a deep, audible breath, green eyes flying back to blue water as she buried her free hand in her coat pocket, nibbling on the inside of her cheek, her voice low, almost small with an unfamiliar layer of vulnerability.

“I don’t know. I think I would make a decent teacher. Something like art or history. English could be nice too, but honestly, who wants to be an English major? I could look for a program where I can take both in college and decide some other time. Grading homework and yelling at troubled kids for the rest of my life doesn’t sound too bad.”

Diane’s hand rose and she tucked a couple of stray strands of blonde waves behind her daughter’s ear, her fingertips brushing gently over her soft cheek. She had her nose, she thought before Lily turned her head back to her, while she looked at her from aside. The same pointy nose she had had disliked on herself for so long, until she had seen how perfectly it matched Lily’s face.

“I think you’d make a wonderful teacher.”, she said earnestly when she caught her gaze, and Lily smiled widely, her green eyes brightening as if they were trying to defeat the sun.

“Really?”, she asked timidly, and Diane nodded.

“Really.”, she said, watching as her expression was toned down by something a little less recondite again. And it was okay. They both knew that no matter how badly they had fought in the past and how unpredictably limited their future was going to be, there was no opinion that mattered more to her than her mother’s approval. It was the one she had tested and challenged the most over the years, and it had always been the one she had wanted the most.

“You’re not even trying to talk me out of it?”, she asked in teasing challenge.

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

“Because I know that I couldn’t change your mind anyway.”, Diane chuckled, before her grin faded into something more serious. It curled her lips into a sad smile. “And… I know it sound horrible and I shouldn’t burden you with this, but—”

“Mom, don’t even try to talk your bad conscience in action.”, she cut her off. “You can say anything to me.”

The tip of her tongue darted over her lips. “I can’t help but feel a little relieved. Knowing that you three will be together and have each other, it just makes it a little…” She paused, shaking her head. “Not easier, that’s not the right word, but—”

“Peaceful?”, Lily tried and Diane thought about that for a second.

“Let’s just say it makes the thought of leaving hurt a little less.”

They finished their cigarettes in silence, Lily handing Diane the unlit cigarette butt again before she broke the silence in a small voice.

“Mommy, can I ask you something?”

“Anything, honey.”, Diane said gently, and Lily cleared her throat.

“How does it feel? Not physically, I can read all about that online, but…” She paused. “How does it _feel_?”

Diane hummed in thought, the sound deep like the crackling of a fire. “Well… the first weeks were hard. And I mean really hard. Probably the hardest time of my life if I think about it. It felt like my body or, I don’t know, my fate if you want to call it that, had turned against me and I was just sitting idly by, letting it win.” She looked down, smoothing down invisible wrinkles in her pants over her thighs, before she met her eyes again, her lips twitching aside, her voice low and raspy. “I’m devastated whenever I think about all the things I’m going to miss. But I also remember everything I was and am still here for. And it’s been quite a nice life, with much better people and so much more love than I had expected.”

She smiled, tucking the same strand of hair back behind Lily’s ear that she had smoothed out of her face just moments ago, her long curls caught by the wind again. “I mean, I never thought I’d be a mother until I met your Dad. I never even thought I would be a wife before I met him. But then I did, and you and Nathan came along and I never thought I’d be particularly good at doing what mothers are supposed to do, but you two were just the best kids I could have had and I still love every minute of being your Mom. So, to answer your question, it feels unexpected and heavy and utterly terrifying and I have no idea how to prepare for it. But everything else in my life felt just the same at first. And those things all turned out so much better than I thought they would. So, I think it might be time for me to stop being so terrified of uncertainty and then, maybe, it won’t be as hard as it feels right now.”

She took a deep breath and feigned a smile. “God, I missed smoking.”, she chuckled in feigned lightness.

“And I missed you.”, Lily whispered softly. And she was going to miss her.

“I missed you, too.”, Diane said, taking her daughter’s warm hand in hers and entwining their fingers.

And she was going to miss her.

…

It was almost exactly four months after the diagnosis that Diane had to be taken to the hospital because the fevers had gotten out of control. Almost four months, and he knew that somewhere behind her bony frame and pale, bruised skin there was still this force of a woman who had been told a maximum amount of time she could reach and tried to refuse to stop fighting to hold out until then.

But she wouldn’t. They all knew she wouldn’t.

Kurt had decided to pull Nathan out of school for the time being. He’d seen the look on Diane’s face when he’d told her, on the verge of voicing her protest, but she had kept silent.

Whether it was because she knew she needed to accept that from now on, he was the one who would have to make these decisions alone, or because she wished to be able to see her son in her last days, he did not know. And he did not know which one of the two thoughts hurt him more, either.

One night, she woke up, her eyes opening slowly to the sight of a bouquet of white calla lilies on her nightstand.

She tilted her head aside to face him sitting on a visitor’s chair next to her, a smile on her lips.

“They’re beautiful.”, she said, her voice raspy as it always was these days.

“I’m glad you like them.”, he said, smiling warmly as her fingers curled around his.

“Where are the kids?”

“I sent them home.”, he said, deciding not to tell her about the forty-five minutes of arguing with them it had taken to convince them to leave. “They needed a proper night of sleep.”

She nodded, squeezing his hand in hers. “Thank you.”, she said and a frown curled his brows.

“For?”

“For being so good at this. With them. You were always so good at it.”

He shook his head, one corner of his lips shooting aside. “Not as good as you are.”

“You’re much better.” Her voice was almost a whisper and he watched as her eyes fell closed again, almost thinking that she had fallen back asleep, until she spoke again. “Kurt?”

“Yes?”

“I…”, she swallowed hard, her eyes opening again and her lashes looked heavy, like it was taking her all the strength she had left in her to look at him. “Come here. There are a couple of things I wanted to talk to you about... Before it’s too late.”

“Di, I—”

“Kurt, please don’t argue right now. I can’t hold out for much longer.”, she cut him off, a weak flash of pain shooting through her tired but intent blue eyes when she saw the tears that were forming in his as he sat down beside her on the edge of the bed.

Her words were slow but clear. “You have to make sure Lily starts college this summer. I don’t know if she’s talked to you, but I know she’ll stay here in Chicago with you… which is fine. You couldn’t change this girl’s mind if you offered her money, but no matter if she gets in here or somewhere else, I don’t want her to postpone her life just because she feels like she has to take care of her family. Okay?”

“Okay.”, Kurt rasped out, nodding. “I’ll talk to her when the time comes.”

She nodded, squeezing his hand weakly. “I forgot to tell you months ago, but Nathan mentioned he wants some kind of ear piercing...” She stopped for a moment, squinting her eyes as she tried to remember what it was called through the fog of the painkillers and antipyretics that were dripping into her veins through the IV on her left hand. Eventually, she gave up and shook her head. “Sounded really painful, that’s all I remember. Anyway, it’s fine by me and I promised him I’d talk to you about it. Let him do this, okay?”

“Okay.”

“And make sure he drinks enough water?”

Kurt huffed out an amused puff of air that could have been mistaken for a muffled sob, quickly brushing his free hand over the tears that had escaped his eyes. “Okay. I will.”

“Thank you. Another thing, I’d like to know that you’ll keep inviting Will for dinner over the holidays. He has his sisters, but I know he’d rather spend it with us… I mean _you_.”, she added, a sudden aching crashing through both of their chests, their fingers clinging more tightly to each other.

“Of course. He’s family.”, he said determinedly.

“Exactly…”

She looked like she was about to drift off again, but then she pressed her eyes firmly shut and opened them with new alertness, lighting up the blue to a shade he had not seen in weeks. “Don’t worry too much about the children, Kurt.”, she said, her voice momentarily back to its usual volume, a slight tremble accompanying the wetness pooling in her eyes. “They’ll be fine, they’re such great kids. And… and you’re the best father they could have. Don’t ever forget that, okay?”

He snivelled, bringing his free hand to her cheek and catching her tears with his thumb. “Okay.”, he almost choked out, and the corners of her lips twitched aside.

“Promise?”, she whispered throatily.

“I promise.”

He leaned in, gently pressing his lips on hers as her free hand cupped his on her cheek.

“Kurt?”, she asked as the parted. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“No, I mean…” She took a shaky breath, casting him a teary smile. “Kurt, growing up I never felt like… like there was a place for me.”, she whispered, her thumb roaming over the back of his hand. “I thought I was always going to drift, searching for… something, and never even knowing what I’m searching for. A home, I don’t know... But then I met you, and… being with you, in the life we’ve built together, it gave me a place that always felt like it was just for me and it was the only place I ever wanted to be. So…” She shrugged, smiling through her tears, looking into his eyes that had always been there for her, in good times and bad times, and everything in between. “I really love you.”

And he looked into her blue eyes that had always given him strength, through sickness and health and everything that was and had yet to be, the turquoise they made together the only connection he had felt in life that had always made him want to stay, even or especially now that he knew that she wouldn’t.

He had to. For both of them.

“I really love you, too.”

…

They didn’t get great last words, like they did in romantic comedies or sappy novels. She just closed her eyes one morning, drifted off to sleep and a while after, her heart simply stopped beating.

No pain, no fever. It had just stopped beating, like she had been waiting for the moment where she felt the least amount of pain to allow herself to go peacefully.

It was a Friday. Outside on the concrete streets of Chicago the rain was pouring furiously on the people who trafficked from station to station, building to building, building to cab, from restaurants back to work, their lives still playing while one little, invisible corner of the world had been put on pause, like its walls that had so often protected them inside from all the sorrow it kept out had finally turned on them and cut out the noise of the tact everyone was supposed to keep dancing to.

The sky was grey, the day seemed dark, like they were in romantic comedies or sappy novels.

But the credits didn’t start rolling to pull them out of their misery. And so they sat in silence, each of them waiting for something to happen, for guidance as to what to do now, a sign, a clue, right now before the stress of having to plan the funeral would give them a little release, something to do, a small distraction from the pain of all-consuming helplessness.

Kurt sat on the couch, his gaze on the carpet, motionless ever since they’d gotten home around three hours ago, his eyes furiously trying not to drift up and catch the sight of the framed photo on the mantlepiece over the unlit fireplace. Thanksgiving, fifteen years ago.

Nathan had gone upstairs, the door to his room wide open, dimmed music sounding out of the left headphone he had not put in his ear as he laid on his back, facing the ceiling. It had become a habit over the last months, leaving one ear free and the door open, at least ajar, in case something happened, wishing that it wouldn’t. Up until now, now that he was holding on to the hope that something, anything would happen.

Lily sat on the stone steps to the backyard, her hair damp, the angry rain soaking her skinny jeans while she smoked one cigarette after another. She was the only one who allowed herself to cry.

…

Will came by some time around the afternoon, speechless as they all were, promising to come back tomorrow when he politely declined Kurt’s offer to stay for dinner. If they needed anything, he was just one call away, he said and Kurt returned the gesture, a distant, absent-minded look on his face as if he had actually been far away from the conversation. It was the first thing that made sense to him today.

His car remained in the driveway for a couple of minutes longer after he had left the house as he cried behind the steering wheel, their last conversation replaying over and over in his head, and he could not find a way to put a stop on it.

_“Will? I need a favour.”_

_“Anything.”_

_“Look, you’re my best friend. You’re the only family I have apart from Kurt and the children. And they really do consider you their uncle. So… Please, keep an eye on them for me? I need to know that someone’s watching out for them. Kurt is…” She had paused, pressing her lips together as tears began to roll down her face. “He is the best father my kids could have, and I know he would do anything to make sure that they’re alright. But this is going to be really hard on him, and… I also know he would never ask for help. So, if you could just make sure that they’re safe and okay, I would—”_

_“Diane, you don’t even have to ask. I promise I’ll be there.”_

He cried because the rain was mocking his grief, cried because the truth was that he had no idea how to be there for Kurt and the children through this. Because he could not even begin to understand why his best friend had had to be taken away from him, a woman who had been gentle and good, never wanting to cause harm or pain, always careful to do the right thing. And if losing her was this painful for him, he could not even imagine what it had to be like for her family, her children.

The fact that he knew she had been happy was a small comfort. But it did not comfort him today.

…

When the sun had gone down, they ordered Chinese.

It was still a Friday. And it gave them something to do.

They sat there, silence lingering heavily around the dining table, none of them really eating and rather rearranging their food with their single-use chopsticks, not saying a word, not even looking at each other and deliberately trying not to look at the one empty chair to Kurt’s left, until Lily’s eyes were caught by the small plate in the middle of the table.

“Have I finally lost what was left of my mind or does it even feel wrong to have ordered spring rolls without her?”, she mumbled throatily, more to herself than to anyone else.

The only reply she got was a look from her father, the corners of his lips twitching into a lopsided smile that did not even seem to try to reach his eyes.

No one ate a single spring roll that night.

Later, after Lily had come back inside from the backyard and lowly wished him a good night before she had disappeared in the bathroom, Kurt knocked against the doorframe to Nathan’s room. He did not look up.

“Do you… want to talk?”, he asked, walking around the bed and coming to stand awkwardly in front of him.

“No.”

“Mind if I sit here with you anyway?”

Nathan shrugged and Kurt sank down on the carpet beside him, their backs against the bedframe, Nathan’s head dipped down as Kurt looked at his profile.

“Mom told me you want a piercing.”, he tried and Nathan shrugged again.

“Yeah.”

“I think we can make that work.”

He scoffed derisively. “Dad, it’s fine. Just forget about it.”, he said lowly, and the furrow in Kurt’s brows deepened.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean it doesn’t matter anymore. And I know you’re not really fine with it anyway.”

Kurt’s lips parted, then closed again, a moment passing before he spoke again. “No, I am, I…” He wasn’t good at this. He had never been good at this. “I _am_ fine with it.”, he repeated and Nathan sighed, his gaze still somewhere on the carpet beneath them.

“You’re not. You’re just saying that because you feel bad.”

“Nathan, if this is something you really want—"

His head suddenly shot up, a fiery flash in his icy blue eyes. “That’s not what I really want!”, he yelled, breathing heavily, his voice breaking when he continued. “The only thing I really want is my Mom.”

They looked at each other, Kurt’s lips parting and he did not know what to say. Again, he wasn’t good at this. He wasn’t Diane. He could not make this better.

Suddenly, a sharp sob escaped Nathan, shuddering through his body as he dipped his head again and pressed his palm against his lips as his tears took over, muffled cries like he had never heard from him before, not even as a child, flooding out of him, pushing hot tears into Kurt’s eyes.

He placed his hand on his back. “Hey, hey it’s okay. Look at me.”, he said, pressing his lips together when Nathan slowly lifted his head, glazed blue eyes, bright like sapphires meeting his. They were just like his mother’s.

And he remembered how months ago on the day they had told the children about her diagnosis, Kurt had not been able to look him in the eyes because he had feared that seeing all the sorrow, all the forlornness of their situation in them when they looked just like hers would be just enough to break him, because they were what would manifest that it was real.

But he’d been wrong. He had been so very wrong.

“We’re going to be okay.”, he whispered, tears wandering down his cheeks. “I promise.”

Those were her eyes. And they had never failed to give him strength. They always had, and they always would.

Another sob escaped his son, and he wordlessly shifted, until he leaned his head against Kurt’s shoulder and let him wrap his arms around him while he cried.

And in this moment, Kurt knew that somehow, they would get through this together. They would get through this with her spirit in every corner of the house, with her warm laughter in Lily’s throat and her adapted habit to buy fresh white flowers and put them on every free surface she could find, with the bright blue in Nathan’s eyes and her dry sarcasm in his words, and with her love, the love she had awoken in Kurt, the warmth she had radiated all around their life, the love she had had for him and for their children, for the small things in life that too little people even cared to notice that had widened her smile and made her eyes sparkle like the stars, and the big things that had made her tear up in joy, her chest filled with so much love that it had felt overwhelming at times, and now, right now, felt like the provision they needed to carry on.

They would get through this with the strength she had left in all of them.

By remembering and loving her, together, as she had always taught them to.


End file.
